Probable Improbability
by Moonraker One
Summary: Confucius once said, "Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from wise men." Perhaps that's why L, in his quest to bring Kira to justice, has called upon a fool to aid him. crossover with Azumanga Daioh
1. Chapter 1

Probable Improbability

by Moonraker One

A/N: My first Death Note fanfic. I must say, as a writer who's written for DBZ and Naruto, and even one Pokemon story, that I hope I can bring my talents to this fine anime. This is a crossover with Azumanga Daioh, although, with one character only. I hope to silence all doubters that should come.

CHAPTER ONE

Quite possibly the biggest cliché of all time is the old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover."

This single, powerful statement has all the authority of a holy writ from a deity, yet more oft than not falls under the category of "ignore this crap." After all, most homo Sapiens who go about their daily lives seldom think of the deeper meaning buried beneath millennia of overused statements. Even when they do, they seldom think past the words written down. Don't judge a book by its cover? Who decided that those words should be the moral? Why a book and its cover? Because they were the simplest connection most people could make? Why not, "Don't judge a person by their appearance?" Because those were too obvious? And even so, why don't most people think past the analogy anyway?

This is only part of a thought process being repeatedly processed inside the mind of one Ayumu Kasuga. She'd earlier been thinking about her job, and the things she had to deal with. All of that came to a screeching halt when she saw the tagline for the ad. "Don't judge a book by its cover," was written directly beneath a smiling supermodel. She knew immediately that something had to be askew, since supermodels never smiled.

Her high school education had been really more of a journey of the soul. She met people she never would have otherwise, and they came to be known as her friends. College had been quite interesting, especially since she hadn't gotten in the first time around. She mulled a number of topics around in her head before deciding upon a most un-Osaka-like career of insurance. She was the person who asked people questions, then put those results into a computer and it told them how screwed they were.

Her nickname of Osaka was, as it had been from the start, her second most defining characteristic. Even more so than her space cadet status (even at work she frequently would daydream), she would introduce herself with, "Hello, my name is Osaka," then correct herself if they asked for a more real-sounding name. Many people shot her funny looks but she either didn't notice or didn't care. She sat down on a park bench in front of a tree. The sidewalk beneath her feet had many people strolling by, busy contemplating their own problems. Tables with chairs sat in the grass several feet behind a tree. One of these tables had a man sitting in an awkward quasi-fetal position with his feet on the chair and his knees by his head. His newspaper sat against his upper legs.

A break from the typical Kira case saw L Lawliet trying to relax his mind from endlessly pursuing an apparently out of reach figure with the power to end life remotely. It didn't occur often, and in fact he didn't like having to take breaks from his typical thought patterns, but when it did, L knew the only way he would keep his logical ability up would be to stop using it awhile. He noticed a series of questions in the "oddly enough" section of the paper. These "brain benders" were questions that weren't as much common sense as a way to trick the logic centers of most people's brains. Some ninety-five percent of the population, he predicted, wouldn't have the logical observation to notice the answer inside the answer. Most of the questions answered themselves, but people wouldn't notice.

"Hmmph," he half-uttered, half-breathed. "It looks like they're trying to step up their riddles," he whispered to himself in his usual way of thinking out loud to alleviate the need to think internally. It might weird people out, he figured, but to get away from too much thought by thinking out loud would rejuvenate his mental power. "If the vice president of the United States died, who would be the president?" he whispered.

"The President," a voice replied.

L looked over. "You do these riddles often?" Already he was breaking his oath of taking a vacation from complex thought for a few hours. He contemplated what the odds of a random person figuring out a riddle immediately. Numbers went in and out, being changed repeatedly.

"Naw," the girl shot back, her thick Osakan accent audible. "But I got a good mind about those things."

L decided to do a test. He continued reading. "Lee's parents have five children. Four of them are La, Lai, Lo, and Lu. What is the name of the fifth?"

"Lee." The answer came without hesitation.

"There's thirty American cents in a person's hand, consisting of two coins. One is not a five cent piece. What are the two coins?"

"A twenty-five cent piece and a five cent piece."

"An airplane crashes on the border of Germany and Austria without fatality. Where are the dead to be buried?"

"Nowhere."

L looked back to his paper. The last one had not come from the paper, but from his desire to test the girl's psyche. Clearly, her common sense took a large part of her thinking, but the riddles were such that most people would miss them. The opportunity was one too big to pass up. He got up and approached the girl. "Are you going somewhere? I can have my driver take you there."

"Driver? Are you rich, mister...uh..."

L responded immediately. "The name is Ryuzaki."

"Well, Mister Ryuzaki, I'm just tryin' to get home. I suppose I could accept your offer. It's kinda crazy in this messed up world. I mean, some guy tryin' to kill all the bad people," she amended her words, "well, the people he thinks are bad, anyway. They may not be for all he knows. But anyway, how can some guy just kill without goin' up to them and stabbin' 'em a few times or shootin' 'em? Is he like a walkin' disease or somethin'? And if so, why ain't the rest of us dead?"

"Heh, I wish I knew. I mean, the idea of someone just killing when they're a long ways away is hard to grasp." L kicked himself mentally; why hadn't he considered the possibility of Kira being a person who can tailor diseases to specific people and not others? Surely the idea was ridiculous, but so was remotely killing. It would kind of explain certain things.

"Just knowin' a face and a correct name, is kinda weird. That's all Kira needs to kill, I figure."

L looked over. Who was this young woman? She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, but how could she figure that? He knew she wasn't connected to the police. He expressed no surprise outside, but internally, he felt as though his head had been struck with a sledgehammer. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, obviously he's killed people whose names were published. I noticed he only kills people whose correct names are published. There are some criminals on the news with no name shown. They don't die. There are also names without faces. Those people don't die either."

L acted as though he'd learned something surprising. "That certainly does make sense," he commented. Her next comment intrigued him.

"But you wanna know somethin', mister? I'm positive there's some kinda supernatural force involved."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I ain't much for science, mister Ryuzaki, but I don't think there's any science explanation that is possible."

"And when the impossible has been eliminated," L finished, quoting Sherlock Holmes, "the possible, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"Ya got it mister Ryuzaki." She started looking around.

L found the girl extremely difficult, even with his superior logical abilities, to figure out. On one hand, she displayed, at the very least, the ability to take notice of the obvious within a problem. However, her mannerisms, the way she looked around, all suggested that she had far less mental ability than he gave her credit for based on the simple teasers he read off. Although he hated judging based on the immediate, he noticed she didn't look like the stereotypical genius.

The call was made and within a few minutes, a fancy car appeared. He may have had the appearance of a zombie, what with his strange posture and circles around his eyes, but he always traveled in style. "So, where do you live?" L inquired, taking the initiative in the conversation.

"You sure are high class, mister! I live up about five blocks that a way in the apartment complexes with the bright colors on the roof."

"You heard that, right?" L said.

"I think I've got the idea, yes," Watari replied.

L got in the back seat, leaving the middle seat open for space between the girl and himself. He sat up on the seat in his usual abnormal style. He spent the entire time analyzing the girl as she stared at all the different aspects of the car. She said nothing, which he took to be symbolic of her nature. Her amazed looks served as evidence to him that she was an idiot in manners of public. But from where, he wondered, had that amazing problem-solving and logical pattern come from? He didn't know, and his lack of knowing did not fly. He had to know; he made it his business to know. This would be a task to prove, he decided. So when she got back to her apartment, he made it his business to make a personal visit.

"Do you mind if I come up to use your bathroom?" he lied.

"If ya gotta go ya gotta go, mister Ryuzaki," she fired back. "It's the third door on the left."

The first few steps into her apartment gave him a good idea of her walk of life. The living quarters consisted of a main living room, with a small, outdated TV on a stand that obviously wasn't a prized antique. The wood wasn't; it was particle board and veneer. Connected to this living room, a modest kitchen stood. Modest would be pushing it. It sat in a space you could walk eight steps from one end to another, and stretch your arms out to touch the other ends. A bedroom, a bathroom, and you had the entire space she lived in. L, who had grown accustomed to expensive living conditions, barely avoided claustrophobia. This too, he figured, did not meet the image of a genius. No, he realized, she had to be much simpler than his initial amazement said. But the nagging feeling that something lingered, was one he couldn't shake.

"I have somethin' of a weird question," she beckoned, as he stood in the bathroom pretending to pee.

"Go ahead." This he had to hear. The moment she described her question as "weird," he found himself needing to hear it for sheer curiosity.

"Do you know of any good people I can talk to? You know, about personal things and the like?"

L looked up a moment, pondering her statement. "You're talking to me about personal issues, aren't you?"

"No no," she corrected. "Like, people who're _paid_ to hear you talk to them about your personal issues."

The moment that statement came about, his thought process became confirmed. He could have jumped for joy at that moment, if he wasn't trying to keep a low profile. A golden opportunity came before him; he'd be a fool to pass it up. "You know what?" he quickly fired off, jumping at his chance. "I do. In fact, I have a personal psychiatrist that I use in times where my troubles are getting too much for me."

"I don't want no medication or anything like that. And I really don't think I can afford your guy if you drive in cars like that big job out there."

L cringed inside; he couldn't afford to lose this chance. He had to find out about her. So, he did something he didn't do very often: he turned on the charm. "Now, ma'am, you obviously have issues you want to talk about. I want to help you. I'll tell you what: you can use his services for free; I'll pay each session."

"Now mister, you're putting me in an awful spot..."

He had to use his ace in the hole. "You trusted me enough to get in my car, didn't you?"

"But," she argued, "there was a driver, and he looked like a respectable enough man."

"He could've been in on it, for all you know."

Without hesitation she replied, "there were people within screamin' distance."

He gritted his teeth in frustration without changing expression. She was outmaneuvering him in the conversation. "Who's to say I didn't pay them off?" She seemed to accept that answer. He hadn't counted on having to use his reasoning skills in a basic conversation.

"I guess you got a point, Mister Ryuzaki. I'll go."

L handed her his colleague's card. "Tell me your name, so I can tell him who's coming."

She looked at him strangely for a bit. Could she trust that he wasn't Kira? Then she realized, she was no criminal. Her fate was not at risk. "My name is Ayumu Kasuga."

"I hope you take my advice, Ayumu Kasuga." He then bowed and left the apartment. The moment he got back in his car, he used the phone inside the vehicle to call his colleague. "Takemaru? Are you there?"

In an office some miles away, a mid-thirties man with medium brown hair opened a drawer and answered a private cell phone. "I'm always here, Ryuzaki, what piques your interest that requires my services this time?" Takemaru Koizumi had his doctorate framed on the wall, and he made a vast majority of his money not through his usual patients, but rather, the people who L sent his way. The high-ranking practice Takemaru existed primarily to serve the whims of one L Lawliet, but the man would have it no other way. There was too much money at stake to turn his primary client down.

"There's a young woman who I told you could help," L explained. "Her name is Ayumu Kasuga. She has the mannerisms of a stupid person, but I can't get over the feeling that she might have some mental use on our Kira case."

Takemaru rolled his eyes. "So, let me guess, you want me to put her through the ringer without her knowing about it."

"Exactly," L responded. "First you have to listen to her problems to hide my motives. Then, you test her, and compare her results to every patient your friends in psychiatry and you have ever tested. I want thousands of results to compare her to."

Takemaru stared into the phone. "That's...gonna take awhile. You want all the usual fields examined?"

"Do it, and I'll double your salary."

Takemaru grinned. "I'd have done it without the incentive."

L smiled. "I know you would have. And thank you." He then hung up.

"You'd better be right about this girl, Ryuzaki," he whispered after hearing the dial tone.

Over the next few days L got back to the Kira case. If there was one thing he didn't like about this case, it was the idea that he had very little control over events that involved human lives. A lot of human lives, in fact, were at stake. He, being a person self-described as childish and hating to lose, liked even less to have very little ability to manipulate the situation. If there was one thing that he could do to even the playing field, it would be to bring in another to assist him. But thinking back to the girl brought up several important points. Was using her acceptable? Would she agree to assist in it, knowing full well she could die at any moment? And even simpler, would she possess the level of intellect his gut feeling told him she did, but his common sense said she didn't? Such ponderings would distract him from the task at hand; kira. He could not allow this to happen.

A few days had passed. He'd watched every tape of the subway event. Raye Penber and the other FBI agents, were killed. He knew they were killed by Kira. What he didn't understand, and desperately hoped to figure out, was how he'd done it in this instance. A few things just didn't seem to click with him. Matsuda had, in his hands, a list of videos that had the FBI agent in question in them. At L's request, he read it. Immediately, L recognized something.

"Play that image again."

All the police watched with L, as Watari scooped ice cream cones for everyone. "Pause it." L pointed at the screen. "See? Right there he has an envelope. By the time he dies, it's gone."

"My God, you're right! I'd never have noticed that!"

_That's why L is in charge_, Shoichiro Yagami thought.

"And look, it seems as though he's desperately trying to look inside the subway." L was about to go into further detail, when Watari answered a phone call.

"Ryuzaki," Watari replied, "it's Takemaru." He put the phone back to his ear. "Are the results in?" The older man nodded to L.

L approached. "Hello, Takemaru. Tell me what you got."

Takemaru Koizumi stared at a computer screen thanking the heavens he invested in the new record keeping system. "Well, I don't think I've had this unique a case in a while, Ryuzaki," he explained, "but I think you'll find this interesting."

"I'm listening."

"I listened to her first, to get her to lay down her trust for me. Most of what she might need me for is mere stress. Her work was getting to be much for her. After she decided to trust me I gave her 'the questions' under the guise of standard procedure. I gave her the first of eighteen sets of different questions. They test her flexibility of thought, observation skills, knowledge of particular subjects, calculation speed, memory, and reasoning."

"Uh huh. How did she do?"

Takemaru gritted his teeth a moment. It was a nervous habit. "She did rather poorly, actually." Silently, L cursed. He'd figured as much. "Her memory? Below average. Out of 1000 people who've been given this same questions, 61 percent of them did better than her. Reasoning? Average. Very close to fifty percent. Calculation speed? Poor. 77 percent did better than her. Knowledge of particular subjects? Below average. 66 percent of them did better than her. Observation skills were a buck to the trend. She ranked way above average, with only 16 percent of them doing better than her. Her flexibility of thought was absolutely amazing. This was what astonished me. All the other categories taken into account, she's a moron. But I tested her flexibility of thinking with the list of mind-trick questions. She answered all 75 questions...in 77 seconds. Just a little more than one second per question. No one else came close. I've actually seen computers take less into account when solving a problem. When solving a problem, Ryuzaki, she might not be able to solve it very well, but she may actually take more into account than YOU."

L blinked in amazement. "Wow. That is abnormal. But here I was hoping she would be a better help." He thought of something. "Wait, maybe..."

Takemaru interrupted him. "Already ahead of you. I figured, as you do, that she might have some sort of self-esteem issue that was inhibiting her. Sure enough, she said, 'But mister, I don't think I'm gonna score high on your mind test. I'm a bit of a space cadet, if you know what I mean.' Her primary problem is that she considers herself stupid, as well as having a case of Adult A.D.D. But I decided to hypnotize her. Under hypnosis, free from both problems, she scored quite differently."

L began to get nervous. He desperately hoped for good news. "Such as?"

"I gave her the second of eighteen question lists. Her flexibility of thought was still the best. But her self destructive thought processes were inhibiting her. Suddenly her memory went from below average to exceptional. Only 8 percent of people tested better than her. She was able to memorize and recall long strands of numbers and recall them perfectly in the middle of complex discussion. Her reasoning suddenly went from average to exceptional, as well. Only 1 percent tested better than her. That's only 10 people. And of those ten people, you, Mello, and Near, are three of them. Her calculation speed only went up from poor to below average. Which makes sense, since her high school transcript lists math as her worst subject. Knowledge of particular subjects wasn't going to go up, so that, predictably, stayed the same. Observation skills went WAY up. In fact, without her self-esteem issues and A.D.D. affecting her, she actually scored higher than you. I'd say, Ryuzaki, that"

L interrupted him. "Wait, repeat that?"

"In the observation problems, no one tested higher than her. She noticed details I wouldn't have imagined, if I didn't design the problems."

L had to sit down. "Okay, thank you so much, Takemaru. I'm definitely going to try to get her on this case."

Takemaru chuckled. "Hell, if I were you, and if her calculation speed and background knowledge were higher, I'd put her in training to be the next L."

"Tell me something, Takemaru, do you think your hypnosis helped her get over her self-esteem issues? Because I'm gonna need her this good when she's not in a trance."

"Oh, don't worry Ryuzaki. I'd say me listening to her life story and giving her advice did that. It stems from her childhood, where her parents always gave her crap for not being smarter, when in actuality she was plenty smart enough, as those test results surely show. But she started to believe them, and it affected her. I think, if she had been raised in a better household, she'd be in the best college in the nation."

"Okay. I'll talk to you some other time, Takemaru. Now delete any record of her real name and simply call her 'Osaka.' in your records"

"I got it." Takemaru hung up.

Matsuda looked at L. "Ryuzaki, what's going on?"

L glanced at him. "First of all, we're going to change our plans. Now, we're going to focus primarily on those who Raye Penber shadowed. And I want to put hidden cameras and listening devices in your homes." Naturally, this caused an uproar. "Hey, I thought we were putting our lives on the line, not just our jobs?"

Chief Yagami looked down. "I'm ashamed to think that my family has come under suspicion, but myself and Ryuzaki will oversee the surveillance!"

"I was planning on it. But we're not going to put in the cameras just yet."

Chief Yagami looked at him funny. "Why not? Won't we be giving Kira time to take a lead?"

"More than likely," L admitted. "But I want to add another member to this case, if she will accept, and give her time to get caught up."

"Who?" Ukita asked.

"Someone, who, I think, will be a great help."

In a small building about twenty miles away, a phone rang, and a secretary answered it. "Greater Japan Insurance, Yahiko speaking." She put the phone down, and stood up. "Ayumu! AYUMU!"

"What?" Osaka cried out.

"Telephone call!" The secretary transferred it to the necessary office.

"Hello? This is Ayumu Kasuga."

L smiled. "Hey, Osaka? How'd you like to go on an adventure?"

She at once recognized the voice, and donned one of her "space cadet" open mouthed grins. "What kinda adventure, mister Ryuzaki?"

L thought of how to word it based on her personality. Ah! He had it!

"One that involves fun things like people getting killed and you figuring out who did it."

Osaka's spacey grin got wider. "I'm there!"

"Alright then. Come to the room at the hotel I'm about to tell you, and don't tell anyone or write anything down."


	2. Chapter 2

Probable Improbability  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER TWO

L sat in a chair, knees by his chin as usual, explaining item after item to Osaka. He originally hated the idea of giving Kira more time to go about his genocidal activities, but when he heard from chief Yagami that his plans had changed and his house would not be fully vacant for an additional two days, this gave the detective the window regardless. Explaining things to Osaka, now that her mental condition had been treated, came quite easier than he expected. The hardest thing, he found out the hard way, was keeping her on task. Ask Takemaru about medication, he reminded himself. The next hardest thing came in the form of having to share his sweets with her. She had an appetite on her, that girl. She wasn't getting fat, so perhaps she burned a lot of calories on thinking, just like him. The other family that Penber had been shadowing, that house freed itself quickly, so L went on his own to put in the cameras. Initially he felt uneasy about not bringing Osaka along, but he didn't notice any traps to check for entry into rooms, so he felt better.

"Tell me, mister Ryuzaki," Osaka chimed, looking up from a surveillance video.

"Hmm?" L half-hummed. He took a bite of a snickers bar.

"I was just wonderin' when we're gonna go to the other house. I never put bugs in someone's house. Well, not the spyin' kind, anyway. One time I accidentally had lice in my hair and went to my friend Tomo's house..." She shook her head. She caught herself drifting off topic again; the Takemaru guy had told her not to.

"You're in luck; we're going to do that tomorrow."

Osaka perked up. "That's great. I always wanted to spy on someone's house. I feel like I should have a British accent or somethin'."

L reached in his pocket and produced a series of small cards. "I almost forgot. Here are the entry cards into the hotel rooms I'll have everything in."

"Can I ask a favor? Do you got a spare bed I could sleep in? Since I don't gotta go to work tomorrow, I figure it'd waste time to catch the night bus home and the morning bus here again." She went back to studying the video.

"Sure. I'll have Watari bring out the extra mattress." Taking a cue before being told, the elderly gentleman left the room. L nodded in his general direction, as an unseen symbol of approval. "Now Osaka, I have to tell you, I really want you to be as observant as possible tomorrow. I don't want you to miss anything, no matter how small it is."

She nodded. "I gotcha, mister Ryuzaki." She stretched out her arms and yawned. "I'd love ta stay up and chat, but I'd love to get some shut-eye. I'm gonna go to bed, ok?" Barely waiting for his agreement, she left the chamber and went past the rest of the group and into the other room. She made sure the door was shut, then pulled off her top and pants, then slid her night wear over her main outfit, slowly. When it fit comfortably over her frame, she lay on the mattress, not even pulling the covers over her.

The cameras displayed that the first household had completely fallen asleep. There wasn't a single member still awake. L found this acceptable, since it didn't appear as though any were likely to wake up and continue any action. He flipped two switches on the panel in front of him, and the monitors shut off en masse. He listened around him; when no sounds could be heard, save for the usual creaking of the building, he pulled a small remote out of his pocket. The button on it switched on a single monitor in front of him. On it, displayed Osaka—complete in her night wear sleeping on the mattress. Her angle gave him a view of her sleeping on her left side facing the camera. She had hands folded under her pillow, and her hair strewn chaotically behind her head and on her shoulders. The nightgown did little for her chest—which wasn't much to begin with—but it accented her hips. Her business shirt and pants did little for her hips, but in the soft gown, her excellent hips and thighs became quite the sight to see.

_Perhaps if Kira can indulge in his killing_, L thought to himself, _then I can spy on a girl. After all, it isn't perverted to admire a fine piece of art_. He sat there, just watching her, with his hands propped up on his knees. He started to feel guilty after a few minutes, but couldn't take his eyes off the screen. Her rhythmic breathing, the gentle, harmless look on her sleeping face, her shimmering hair. He admired what he couldn't touch. It was almost an hour before he switched off the monitor and went to fall asleep in his own bed, right in the surveillance room.

Shoichiro Yagami had told him of the specific time that the house became empty. L set his clock for three hours ahead of time. Never could it be said that preparedness was not his primary advantage over adversaries.

As it turned out, Osaka managed to pre-empt him by waking up almost five minutes ahead of him. By the time he'd gotten out of bed, and punched his alarm clock in the process, she'd already managed to get ahead of him in the shower. He found this out by going to knock on the door, and being met by Watari. "Your female friend is in there," he instructed L. L rubbed his eyes.

"Well, if that is the case, can you fix me something to eat?"

"The usual?" Watari knew what this meant. Ice cream deluxe with the familiar seven toppings.

"Yeah, the ice cream deluxe with the seven toppings."

Watari smiled and headed off while L sat on the floor outside the bathroom. The elderly gentleman, quite possibly, could be called L's second greatest asset. All the money he made could not have happened without the familiar sight in the hat taking care of half the business. All the cases he solved could not have happened if he'd had to meet the police organizations in person. So, despite being a glorified butler, Watari held only the highest regard to his young master because he knew that the two worked together like a well-oiled machine. So, he had no problem making a seven-layered ice cream natural disaster for a man very much younger than him.

"Ryuzaki, it's ready!"

L popped up from the floor at the sound of his morning sweets being available for consumption. Sliding his hands into his pockets, the young detective moved towards the kitchen area. "You've made a habit of outdoing yourself, Watari," L complimented. He sat down and ate. Showering could be done afterwards. The spoon he took by the handle in his normal way of mishandling it, and began scooping ice cream into his mouth.

Osaka walked by the kitchen, a towel wrapped around her torso. "The shower's yours. Hey! You're eating ice cream for breakfast?...! That's amazing!" She entered the kitchen.

"Do you want some? I can have Watari make you some."

She shook her head. "I usually eat a somewhat normal breakfast. Ice cream in the morning is something I haven't seen before. I think I'll just see what you have available." Watari went to one of the cupboards and showed her the "normal" foods she talked with L about. Finishing his mountainous ice cream, the detective went back upstairs and entered the shower. He considered a clean body to be very important, even if his clothing struck everyone as somewhat uneventful and extremely disorganized. He took his clothes off and entered the stream of hot water. _I wonder what kind of breakfast she usually eats,_ L thought. He had spied on her in her sleep, and despite no naughty bits showing, he felt like a pervert. Still, at the same time, he'd found her to be very beautiful. She didn't have much chest—which he felt wasn't the most important anyway—but she made up for it with her hips. She had great hips. She also struck him as being the type of girl who was as curve-less as a flower pot throughout the teenage years, then came into her figure at the outset. He had no evidence, but her face seemed to tell the tale; it still had that child-like demeanor. Then again, it could merely be her ADD.

Once he'd finished showering, and Osaka completed her "normal" breakfast, he waited by the phone until he got a call from one of his agents who told him that the Yagami household had become barren. With Light not set to return for several hours, and the wife and daughter out, they had a small window of a little over two hours before the first of the family came home. Within a few minutes, the two of them were out the door, and Shoichiro Yagami would drive them there in his civilian vehicle so as not to arouse suspicion.

"So, tell me, do you really think that Kira is one of the people in my family, Ryuzaki? I mean, really." The senior Yagami's question might have a certain meaning for him, L would disregard emotional attachments and merely respond with matter of fact attitude.

"In all truth, Yagami-san, I do not think so," he explained. "There may be a 1 percent or so likelihood that Kira is in your house, and that warrants us to be doing this, but the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of Kira having nothing to do with your particular family. After all, there are quite a few people in these areas of Japan." He had told the truth, although, at this point, he seriously would not doubt if any particular member of the Yagami household had been Kira up until this point. Even if it was the wife or daughter—the odds of which were unimaginably low—he would not be surprised. The previous cases he'd been on had told him to avoid judging the book by its cover, as the cliché were. Raye Penber had done that by showing his ID to someone on the bus. It had gotten him killed.

"So, what do you want me to do, Mister Ryuzaki?" inquired Osaka. She sat hands clasped on her lap, eagerly waiting for her answer.

"I'm going to figure out where the best places to put the cameras are, Osaka," he told. He looked at her. "I want you to do one very specific thing: I want you to look out for things you would consider 'weird.' I don't care how 'weird' or not, if you get the slightest inkling about something, tell me." I'm sure you can do that, right?"

She smiled. "I'll do the best job I can, Mister Ryuzaki!" She started staring at the clouds. Catching herself, she tried to think more about her task at hand. She had to be serious, she knew; lives were at stake. If she didn't help to the best of her abilities, people WERE going to die, there was no if.

Shoichiro Yagami stopped the car. "Okay, I really hate that you guys have to spy on my family, so let's get this going as quickly as possible, ok Ryuzaki? I hate to sound rude, but please hurry this up."

"Yagami-san, I swear this won't be any longer than it has to be." They stepped up to the door. L turned to Osaka. "Remember, focus on anything that seems unusual. ANYTHING. If there's a speck on the ceiling that looks abnormal, I want to hear about it, ok?"

Osaka nodded, and headed into the house first. L let her go ahead, since she could scout the place first, with her observation skills, that the psychiatrist had told him were superior to his. This way, she could see things before he mucked with them. Sure enough, she went in, and started going into private bedrooms, looking carefully at doors, windows, bookshelves, not a single proverbial stone was left unturned. While she looked at everything, she didn't report anything you wouldn't see in any other Japanese household of the same financial category. After she would leave a room, L would enter with his bag of miniature cameras and listening bugs, and select the choice locations for them. He had always been good at analyzing things, so to figure out where a bug could be placed so as not to be found was a simple task.

Suddenly, L received a shout. "Mister Ryuzaki! I found something unusual!" He came up the stairs as fast as he could.

He looked at the door, and noticed two things. _Hmm_, he thought. _The door to Light Yagami's room has a piece of paper by the door to determine if someone's been in._ He looked at Osaka. "Thank you; that's the kind of observation I'm talking about."

She stopped him before he entered. "That ain't all, Mister Ryuzaki. Don'tcha see the door handle is a bit shorter than it could go?" She moved the handle down slightly. "It doesn't look like it's all the way up."

He looked at the handle. It seemed a minor triviality, and could very well be a simple mechanical failure of the return spring, but it could also mean that the paper was but one part of two systems for determining unwanted entrance. He took a mental note to return the handle to this way when he left. When they went inside, she started her examination on the floor. She looked near the door, and perked up yet again. Leaning down, she picked up two halves a lead for mechanical pencils. L looked at them. He knew they were from the door. _Wow. Light is good. He's got three different ways to tell if someone's come into his room._ His amazement at Light's security almost overcame his amazement at Osaka's observational skills.

L scanned the room, seeing several places where he might want to start looking. He unearthed one of the potential hiding places for things, only to discover centerfold magazines. "I have to tell you, Osaka, you are indeed a natural born sleuth. If you had been born into a different situation, I'd say you could've become a detective." He took note of where certain spots could see, calculating angles in his head.

She went over to the computer desk. She pulled out the bottom drawer, and found nothing but a calculator and several rulers and other math tools in it, so she slid it shut after looking at every angle of it. She then took out the top drawer. It was empty. She looked at it from several viewpoints, and that's when she noticed a little hole on the underside. _Aw, that hole's too small to fit anything much into,_ she thought. _Let's see if there's anything that'll fit._ She looked at the top of the desk. She saw several pens in a holder. She grinned; that might work. She took a pen and unscrewed the cap, pulling out the inner ink tube. She poked around underneath, and slid the tube into the hole. Success! It had fit. She lifted the lid. "Uh, Ryuzaki? C'mere. I definitely found somethin' you'd call weird."

L came over, and looked at the situation. Her pen tube, having been pushed into the hole underneath the drawer, raised a fake bottom. In the bottom, sat a plastic bag with a black notebook that read, "Death Note" in english letters. A rudimentary system of electrical cables fed with a primitive circuit breaker system into the bag. He reached in and pulled out the bag, and Osaka lowered the fake bottom. Opening the bag instantly revealed the purpose of the electrical wires. _This bag has a small amount of gasoline in it,_ he realized. This is the kind of security you use when you desperately want something NOT to be found. _Light is Kira; there's no other explanation._ He opened the notebook. He saw instructions in English and Japanese.

"The human," he read in Japanese, "who has their name written in this note shall die." A_ notebook? What kind of notebook can kill? I don't understand, but it doesn't change the facts._ He stopped reading and opened the notebook. It was full of names of criminals, and underneath some of the names were causes of death. Light—Kira—killed with a notebook. Ludicrous, positively outrageous, L knew; yet it made perfect sense when you took into account that impossible circumstances were arising with deaths of criminals. An outrageous question could only be answered by an outrageous answer.

L shook his head. His initial bewilderment aside, he put the note back into the bag, and arranged it in the fake bottom as perfectly as he could to the way it had been before. Osaka helped him. Then he left Light's room after installing the bugs, and put the door security back into the way Light had arranged it. He felt bad for Shoichiro Yagami, but at the same time he could have danced a jig. He'd finally found who Kira was.

And he couldn't have done it without the keen observations of a girl.

He let loose a small grin. It reminded him of Naomi and how she helped him crack the Beyond Birthday case.

Shoichiro Yagami met Osaka and L by his car. He looked at them. "Did you get done?" He couldn't wait to get back to the hotel. As soon as he got this case over, he could go home.

L stood close to Shoichiro and looked at him. "Yagami-san, I have to tell you something you may not want to hear."

Shoichiro looked at him, slightly irritated. "Ryuzaki, I know you think members of my family might be Kira, but please, stop trying to make me feel better."

L shook his head. "No, that's not it. I've found almost conclusive evidence that your son Light is, in fact, Kira."

The police officer could have exploded. "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!...?" He tried calming himself, but only went so far. "I...I thought you said there was a one percent or so chance! I...I want to see this evidence of yours, right now!" He wanted to beat the shit out of L right now, but out of professional courtesy, kept it in. Still, if this turned out to be fruitless, he would never forgive the detective.

"I've set everything up so your son will not notice anything different than the state he left it," L explained. "Back at the hotel, when we see your son on camera, I'll explain everything." After that, and a few tense moments, the three got back in the vehicle, and went off. A few hours later, the mother and daughter came home, and later than that, Light himself. Sure enough, thanks to Osaka and L, he never noticed that people had been in his room. So when he took out the Death Note, and started writing, it all got caught on camera. Along with his talking to some monstrous creature. Only L and Osaka saw it, because only they touched the Death Note, but from what he'd read, L knew of the rules anyway. It didn't matter; conclusive evidence was conclusive evidence.

Shoichiro looked at the monitor in sheer terror. His emotional storm went to anger, then to sorrow. He didn't want to believe it. However, his eyes wouldn't lie. The facts in front of him could not be altered. L explained everything he saw in the Death Note to him. The elder Yagami went to the bathroom, vomited, and sat down on the floor, crying. L got Watari to make backups of the surveillance tape, and he got the plan together to capture Kira. They had won.

But they would later learn the truth.

Light Yagami?

He was the _least_ of their concerns.


	3. Chapter 3

Probable Improbability  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER THREE

For about five hours after the surveillance footage that definitively incriminated his son in the Kira killings, Shoichiro Yagami sat on a bed in one of L's bedrooms, crying. When his eyes would not produce any more tears, he slid downward to a horizontal position, staring at the lucid darkness of the room. Of all the things to happen, he had never figured on his son being a murderer. Osaka felt bad for him; she knew how much her parents loved her, and if she had to put them through anything remotely this horrific she would probably not be able to live with herself. She sat down and held him comfortingly in her arms, pressing his head against her shoulder while he weeped.

"I hate to see ya put through this, mister Yagami," she said, trying to soften her voice as much as possible. "I can't imagine what it must feel like."

"My...my son," he choked, his face soaking the soft cloth of her dress. "How can my son do such horrible, evil things?" The thing going through his mind most was self-blame. How he could possibly have raised his son to have such a poor ability to judge actions, he didn't know. He'd always told his son, growing up, to value life and the preservation of freedom. So how his son could grow up to be a killer would not register in his mind.

L waited until Osaka had the senior Yagami under control in a separate room, before he got the group together and discussed options for how the arrest would go down. Shifting his shoulders somewhat, he moved forward, then sat down and propped his feet on the seat. "Alright, here's what we've gotta do," he began. "If we're going to arrest Light Yagami with minimal possibility for resistance, we're going to have to all get around him at once. We can't even let him see us following; we've got to seemingly materialize out of thin air and get him in a situation in which utilizing any fragments of that notebook are impossible."

Matsuda scratched his ear. "I know you already have a plan, what is it?"

L popped his neck. "Ok, tomorrow when he goes to campus, I will approach from the normal way. I will probably come across in his mind as just another creepy looking guy, but several of you will be in normal clothes gathered in the crowd. Each of you has a piece of paper under your seat. This will explain your position in the grid-like area of the outside of the school grounds. You will, upon seeing me, engulf him at once, and this way, we can grab his limbs and escort him into a patrol car. Is that clear enough?"

Everyone nodded. L smiled, seeing this. "Good. We cannot let this mess up. This case is almost over. So, I need this choreographed better than our usual activities." Even for a man of his level of intellect, Lawliet could scarcely comprehend the depth of this case. A person—now positively identified as Light Yagami—killing criminals and other undesirables remotely through a magical notebook. One would imagine it the premise of a manga, and not a case. Yet, for such a strange case, the world's greatest detective had done what he could, given the circumstances. He knew, however, that if not for the space cadet's assistance, he would not have positive identification and incriminating evidence. Her amazing mind had not outperformed his, but had instead done something more important—gone outside the barriers his limited thought put up.

As the group scattered to get their respective groups caught up on L's plan, he himself strolled over to the entrance to the spare bedroom. Osaka cradled the sorrowed father near her body to soothe his pained heart, and it struck L as rather motherly. He stepped into the room. "Yagami-san, the pain you are in now is beyond anything I've experienced," L admitted. "I'm truly sorry for the next forty-eight hours."

Shoichiro Yagami looked at the world-famous investigator with a mixture of anger and sorrow in his eyes. "Ryuzaki, part of me wants to despise your very existence," he flared, quickly calming down, "but then I realize that, if you hadn't gotten involved, my son would still be killing people. So for the sake of the greater good, I absolve you of any anger on my part." He stood up. "But I will tell you this. After this case is over, I never want to see your face again. I'm going to quit the police force and attempt to put back together what is left of my sanity."

L put his hand on Shoichiro's shoulder. "Yagami-san, I promise I will pay you your salary out of my own pocket until you die, for the sake of your family."

"You don't have to do that."

L shook his head. "Yes, I do. And once this case is over, you won't see my face again." He left the room.

Osaka followed him. She approached him near the kitchen. He went for a candy bar, and she instead went for a bowl to get some oatmeal. "Ryuzaki, that was really nice of you to promise that," she complimented. "But I gotta tell ya, you certainly brought the world down on that poor man."

L looked at her. "Osaka, I swear, I might have calculated the possible numbers for Light being Kira, but..." he clenched his fists. "I never actually wanted to believe he was Kira. It seemed too easy that he would be the one. And I certainly wasn't imagining that I'd be consoling a member of my team on their family being potentially torn apart." He ran his fingers through his hair, pulling his bangs out of his eyes.

She rubbed his neck from the side. "Ryuzaki, don't beat yourself up over it. You did what you had to do." She hated giving him a spiel that sounded cliché, but at the same time, she felt it needed to be said. As much sympathy she had for Shoichiro Yagami, she felt that Light needed to be stopped.

"I know," he squeamishly admitted, "but I hope that Shoichiro can forgive me."

"Personally, I think he'd have found out anyway."

"Yeah, I just feel kinda guilty."

"Well, don't worry about it, Ryuzaki. I'm going to take a nap."

"Ok, then." He took a bite out of his candy bar.

Everyone knew their place in the game. The future would depend on whether or not the plan would be executed perfectly. People and their motivations, L knew. It always boiled down to people and their motivations; if they weren't as motivated as anyone else, it would inevitably lead to ruin.

Light Yagami woke up, feeling a sense of foreboding. He could not explain it, but as he got up, showered, and checked the fragment of the death note in his watch, he had the sinking feeling that something had been going on beyond his notice. He looked in his hidden section of the drawer, once more ensuring that the note was still there. Not that it wouldn't; after all, according to his traps, no one had been in the room. Still, he kept looking over his shoulder, expecting someone to be there, despite knowing no one would be.

"Ryuk," he whispered, stepping outside the door, "is it just me being paranoid, or is someone watching me?" He knew the shinigami would not be too specific, but he expected some kind of answer.

"You're always paranoid, Light," Ryuk replied. He floated, bored as usual except for when Light gave him an apple or did something interesting.

"That's no help." Light checked his watch again, making sure he'd be on time. His classes were somewhat ordinary. A teenager of his intellect found it extremely uninteresting and predictable. The schools were always so easy to please; just get every answer correct, and win a few trophies for the school to brag over, and they sang your praises until the end of time, or until someone better came along. Either way, it didn't matter. Not to him.

Approaching the building, he noticed that the crowd of people outside of the campus was much larger than usual. Pushing his way through the crowd, he closed in on the entrance. At that moment, L, from about sixteen people away from the target, saw Light and gave a visual cue to Matsuda. _This is it_, the young team member thought. With his movement, five others got involved.

Light immediately noticed that people were closing in on him. He pushed free of the group of people and ran. Normally, he would make it seem less obvious, but the bad feeling he'd gotten earlier just could not be shaken, and he knew that they were onto him. _How the hell? But no one was in my room!_ His thought process wavered around trying to contemplate how they managed to avoid alerting him of their presence.

"Oh shit!" Matsuda shouted. "He's running!"

_Dammit Matsuda! Don't yell!_ L thought, as he took off running, motioning to the rest where Light went. He had never been so close to a target as to actually have to chase him down on foot, but he knew nonetheless the proper way to catch up to the teenager. He closed in, angrily pounding his feet as he inched closer to the dashing Yagami.

"Help! Somebody help me!" Light screamed, hoping someone would disregard their day and interfere. He paused slightly to kick dust in L's direction, then continued running.

One of the officers lifted a badge. "Police business! Nobody interfere!" The chase might involve a lot of people, the police knew. They would have to end this soon.

L put his hand up in front of his face, blocking the dust, running blind for a few seconds, but not slowing down. He got so close to his target he could smell his shampoo. _I've got to take this chance_, he realized. Springing forward, he latched onto the target's torso, bringing him down with the weight of his body. He carefully rolled when he landed to avoid damage to his knees, while still pressing down on his foe. The rest quickly caught up and grabbed each of his arms, handcuffing them together and hoisting him to a standing position, forcefully leading him to the vehicle as he kicked and screamed.

Two of the cops sat in the front seat and drove the vehicle while L and Matsuda sat in the back with the suspect. The youngest cop on the team had his pistol brandished at the side abdominal area of the Kira. L looked over at the captured. "I think, due to the special nature of this case, we can forgo the standard procedure. After all, it's not like you don't have your admirers." The world's greatest detective looked into the anger-filled eyes of his target.

"You don't know what you've done, you know. I don't know if you're L, but if you are, you've made a terrible mistake." Light's anger gave way to one of his sadistic smiles. "You weak-minded morons! You don't quite understand the magnitude of the situation! I am Kira! Kira is the embodiment of justice! You've taken the only man who has the courage to stand against the corruption and evil of this world, and put him away for doing the greatest service in the history of mankind!"

L looked at him. "Correction, Light Yagami; we've done nothing more than capture a twisted serial criminal with a taste for genocide. You are not God. In fact, thinking that you are passing divine judgment is ridiculous. You are not following a real god's will, you are merely killing people _you think_ are unjust."

The would-be God spent the next two weeks in jail until his trial. Once that ended, he found himself wearing a business suit once again, except this time, it would be for his appearance in court. The Yagami family, other than Shoichiro, were notably absent from the proceedings. The mother and daughter would not bare to see their loved one sent to prison. Since the family decided not to spend their own money to fund Light's attorney, he found the Kira's Followers group being more than generous as to spend several hundred thousand on a very expensive attorney. It would prove to be the most lucrative business venture in that defense lawyer's career; however, despite his very seedy and manipulative jockeying for his client's freedom, L and his conclusive evidence proved too great a hurdle for him to overcome. It came down to the closing proceedings.

"Your honor," the defense requested, "can I have the father, Shoichiro Yagami, to give a closing statement?"

"Fine." He scratched his neck; he'd never heard of such a request before.

The aged policeman stood in front of the jury. "Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am a member of the police force. I've seen horrific things, and many acts of evil. So, as an officer of the law, I know my son is a criminal. I know he is wrong, and that his acts are evil." Light kept his mouth closed so as to avoid the jury seeing his sneer at his father's words. What was he getting at? "However, I also am a father. I understand that my son will have to go to prison for what he has done. But I beg of you, as parent, please. Don't send my son to his death. Let him live; show him the mercy you'd show your own kids." He got down on his knees, his tears staining the floor. "Let my son live to regret his actions!"

L, seated two rows behind the prosecution booth, looked at Shoichiro. He respected the father's choice words, but certainly wasn't making it any easier for their case. _I feel your pain, Yagami-san, but please stop making it harder for me._ He pushed his hair out of his face.

The prosecution stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I empathize with Shoichiro Yagami, as a father myself, but I hope you all understand that Light Yagami is evil. You've seen him kill people with no emotion whatsoever. He has a list of victims almost seven thousand long. He believes himself to be passing 'righteous judgment' on the human race, which, in his mind, justifies anything he does. He believes himself above the law of the land. I highly doubt you need to hear anymore; you've seen evidence. I believe that the choice is obvious. Thank you."

The jury went away for a few minutes. Shoichiro leaned over and cried into L's shoulder. The air in the room could not be thicker. The father could not remain in the room any longer; this fairly insane environment got to him and he left the room before he believed he would go nuts. L looked over to his right at Osaka. He whispered in her ear, "I don't think I'll ever be able to thank you enough, Osaka. I probably would not have been able to crack this case without you." The entire congregation was silenced by a bang of the judge's gavel as the jury filed back in.

"Has the jury delivered a verdict?" inquired the judge, feverishly watching the clock. This day had dragged on too long for him.

The main juror stood up. "We have, your honor."

The judge turned to the expensive attorney seated adjacent to Light Yagami. "Would the defense please rise?" He turned to the juror and nodded. Light's sweating had been profuse the entire time. He cleared his throat; these idiots were going to put him away for doing his righteous duty and that would be the legacy of the great Kira. He would be remembered as a insane serial murderer, and not the God he knew he was meant to be.

The man cleared his throat. "On the charge of conspiracy to commit genocide, we find the defendant guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to cover up a crime, we find the defendant guilty. On the charge of attempted terrorism, we find the defendant guilty. On the charge of acts of willful harm against figures of a foreign nation, we find the defendant guilty."

The judge closed his eyes a moment, then looked at the accused. He knew the case would make him famous regardless of his decision, but he resisted the temptation to send Kira to his death. If he allowed the figure wishing to be God to die, and have the potential of becoming a martyr, it would only result in greater response to the trial. "Light Yagami, I sentence you to three consecutive life sentences. This court is adjourned."

At the final bang of the gavel, Light Yagami began screeching for dear life as officers dragged him away, to the transport to his new home at the prison. It would prove to be the first time in the judicial history of Japan where an individual could not be transported with other prisoners, and would require a huge escort to avoid the sheer volume of protesters that would assail the transport. However, in the immediate of the courtroom, the volume of the people shouting got so loud that police actually had to interfere just to keep a riot from breaking out.

"Yagami-san," L lamented, "I'm sorry that I had to lead to this. However, I hope there are no long-term feelings of anger towards either myself or Osaka."

Shoichiro wiped his face, his hair disheveled and face red from crying. "No, because the alternative would be for a killer to be on the loose. Thank you for caring about my family and myself. I hope we never have to work together again, though, Ryuzaki."

Watari got the vehicle and picked up both L and Osaka. Shoichiro Yagami would go to his house and cry the rest of the evening. The two that had cracked the case went back to L's hotel room for the time being. Both sat down and took in the magnitude of the moment. Watari went in the other room and got in touch with the others at the Whammy household to tell them of the good news before they would hear it on the news.

"We did it, Osaka. You and I are a very good team. I hope this doesn't turn you off to people, this stuff about murder."

Osaka laughed. "Aww, nothin'. I had more fun this time than any other time since high school."

L scratched his head. "Do...you want to go out, and just talk sometime?"

The two would get in the limo and have Watari drive them to an expensive series of locales. While all this was going on, a man with dark hair sat watching the news with a down-and-out look on his face. _What? Kira has been incarcerated?...! But he's a God! Do you mean he's not a God?_ How can this be? He started pulling on his hair while screaming.

A plop sounded.

He looked to his right, then moved over to pick the object up.

He held the object in trembling hands. "Death...note?"

"Hello, there."

"AAAGGGHHH! Who are you!...?" he sat on the ground, sweating in fear.

Ryuk flew to a standing position. "I think you can provide a good cure to my boredom, Teru Mikami."


	4. Chapter 4

Probable Improbability  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER FOUR

The two responsible for the previous Kira's downfall sat opposite each other in one of Tokyo's many five-star restaurants. If it wasn't for L's paying off the owner, he probably wouldn't have been allowed in, in his traditional t-shirt and casual pants, without socks on his feet. But then again, the world's greatest detective had to have quirks that set him apart. Osaka looked quite out of place in her formal dress. "Are you calm, Ryuzaki? You seem rather uptight," she politely said to him.

L shifted left and right as he got into a comfortable position in the chair. "I don't know, Osaka," he replied. "I just get the feeling like I'm overlooking something. I...I just get the feeling that we haven't seen the last of the power of the Death Note." He cleared his throat. "I think we should keep working together."

Osaka clicked her wine glass to his. "We can worry about that later. Right now, it's about us and our accomplishment. After all, we did bring down Kira." She spaced out for a moment. "Too bad for Yagami-san, though." She took a drink.

"Yeah, you're right." L took a drink.

The waiter brought them their food. Osaka with her plate of traditional Japanese cuisine, L got his gigantic bowl of ice cream covered with sprinkles, chocolate, and bananas. The detective dug quickly into his bowl, and downed the mountain of sweet dessert. The girl sitting across from him slowly picked it apart using her chopsticks, and always managed to observe proper table manners. While the two involved themselves in a date, a figure sat in a room furiously scribbling names in an all too familiar notebook.

"Eliminate." The single word repeated over and over again, each time a name found its way through his hand and onto the page. "Eliminate." He couldn't stop until he'd reached a certain number of names on each page. His schedule, he arranged in such a way that at any specific point during the day one could know exactly what he did. If the previous God had fallen due to the meddling affairs of man's hand, then he would make sure to live up to the throne even better than his predecessor. The fact that he had been chosen to receive the power meant that God always intended to concede the power to someone that he judged to have the right sense of justice.

"You certainly write fast, Mikami," Ryuk noticed.

Mikami did not look up, did not slow down to give a response. His purpose he made clear with frequent shouts of "eliminate." Ryuk took the opportunity to lay down on the bed and sleep. Perhaps he made a mistake by taking the Death Note to someone with such a rigid schedule. This Mikami never seemed to make an effort to do anything outside of his planned out life. It struck the shinigami as rather boring.

"You're not God...are you?" Mikami asked, not slowing down his feverish writing down of names.

Ryuk scratched an itch. "Ah, what a boring question. No, I'm not your God. Light Yagami wasn't God either...well, I don't know even if one does exist. All I've ever heard is you humans referring to him, anyway. We don't discuss useless crap like that." He swallowed an apple whole.

"Well then, I suppose I have to be God," Mikami made clear, actually increasing his writing speed.

A cell phone rang, breaking the calm scenery between Osaka and L. The detective lifted the phone to his ear. "Oi, what are you calling me for?" He sincerely hoped it didn't involve the Death Note, which he calculated that it probably did. The answer immediately made itself known in the form of a fear in the voice of the person on the other end.

"Ryuzaki!" Matsuda shouted, frenzied. "The killings have started up again, despite the fact that Light Yagami is currently sitting in his prison cell, devoid of the note or any part of it!"

Osaka could discern almost at once by the sudden frown on L's face that something had taken a turn for the worse. "Mister Ryuzaki, is it...?" His nod confirmed that the Note had in fact made its way to someone new. She tensed up a bit, because she hated the idea that their mission had not yet ended. She couldn't possibly imagine that Light Yagami had made his escape from such a highly secured prison, so someone else must have taken possession of the Note, or that the shinigami had in fact transferred it. The meddling in human affairs by an other worldly force...such audacity! She could not forgive such nonchalant toying with human lives.

L smiled at Osaka. "Don't worry," he added, calming her down as he hung up. "We can continue the case once we're done here. Let's enjoy each other's company just a little bit more tonight." He went back into digging into his food. "Hey, tell me more about this, 'Tomo' that you went to high school with. She sounds interesting."

Osaka's trademark open mouth grin returned. "Miss Tomo was kinda like a firecracker," she reminisced. "She always reminded me of what would happen if you were to combine crack with high amounts of caffeine. She would leap into the classroom, and I swear sometimes I could imagine her as a character in a series like Ultraman, except she'd have to be Ultrawoman, wouldn't she?" She thought a moment. "She always did piss off Koyomi with her behavior, now didn't she?" Her high school career had been quite interesting, and she had a lot of memories to look back upon.

"Your education sounds a lot more interesting than mine," L replied. This girl told stories that he would never have imagined experiencing during formal education. "But then, I grew up in an orphanage. Plus, I didn't get to hang out with the folks you did." He took a drink, then looked at the time. "I think it's time to go, don't you agree?"

"Yeah, I kinda guess so, Mister Ryuzaki." She drew her coat upon standing up. Her dress hugged her form as she wriggled her arms into her thick coat. She waited for him to wrap his arm around her shoulder and lead her out. Watari waited for them at the door, having already paid the check. L couldn't help but appreciate her dress, as it hugged her curves. He'd custom ordered the dress made for that reason. He wanted to make her look less like an awkward late-bloomer and more like an attractive woman, and certainly, he had succeeded.

Once they got back in the car, they small-talked about the dinner for awhile, having decided not to discuss matters of the Death Note until they were back in the hotel room. L took initiative and kissed Osaka. She blushed severely, having gone quite awhile without being on a serious date. "Let me tell you something, something that may sound weird," L began.

Osaka looked over. "Yeah?" She wondered what would weird him out.

"I'm glad I met you, because of a lot of things. Not just the case, but, you're a good person to be around." He kicked himself mentally; how could he not find a proper way to word his statements? He never had that problem before.

"You're good company too, Mister Ryuzaki," she returned. She'd doubted her own words as well. She figured it would be good to perfectly return a statement like that. However, she had hoped she would be able to translate her thoughts more clearly.

A cold room with armed guards behind one-way glass saw a young girl in her mid-twenties waiting with a tape recorder and a notepad. The thick steel door grumbled as it slid open, and two armed escorts led a handcuffed young man to a chair opposite the young girl at a table. As per patient-client privilege, they left the room, but remained outside for observation purposes. "So, let's begin. Your name?" the girl said.

"Light Yagami," he responded, coyly grinning. "But then, we both know why _I'm_ here, what about you? What's your name?" He rested his chin on his arm, which rested on his chair armrest as he leaned back. He could care less about this woman.

She looked up at him. She figured he had to know her name. Besides, he had no access to the Death Note. "I won't tell you my full name, but let's just say my name is Koyomi. I'm a junior psychologist and you're going to answer my questions. It'll make your life a little easier if you cooperate." She hated arrogant asses like this guy. They made her angry. The only thing more annoying than arrogant assholes were easily excitable jumping beans like her old schoolmate Tomo.

He twisted his body around, leaning on the table with his elbows. "So you've come here to interview me? You want to know what makes God tick?" He laughed a bit. "You impudent mortals don't have a clue. You think you're being just by locking me away in this prison, free from my ability to kill. But you people equate what I do with what Hitler did. I'm nothing the sort. He wanted to kill the undesirables; all I care about is killing those who prevent innocent people from living happy lives." He made a flicking motion with his hand. "What's so wrong about that?"

She wrote down his answers as the tape recorder memorized his answers. "But even so, the real sin is how low your opinion is of human life in general. You may consider them 'unjust' but you can't just kill nonchalantly."

"NO! THAT'S WHERE ALL OF YOU ARE WRONG!" he snapped, pointing for effect. He slammed his hands on the table. "If you don't treat the unjust as though they are meat, you put them on the level of the innocent! They don't even deserve the holy judgment of God they get, they should simply cease to be!"

Obviously this subject would prove fruitless. "So, explain the basis on which you claim to be 'God.' I want to know more about that." She prepared her pen.

He leaned back, and his anger seemed to fade away. A sadistic grin painted his face. Apparently, she'd pushed the right button. "You want to know my qualifications to be 'God?' It's simple. How many times in the bible do you hear of God punishing the wicked? I'm doing the job for him, since he isn't here right now. He's obviously taken a vacation, or maybe just lazy. In any case, there are six billion people on this planet. It took from the dawn of man until the early eighteen hundreds to get _one _billion. A lot of these people need to stop living; it'll put less strain on everyone else. But I'm not into lowering the population randomly; if all the bad people are judged and killed, it saves us a lot of effort."

She wrote down her conclusions. "So, think on this, then, Light; what makes _your _judgment holy? You're just a man. Even if you believe yourself to be doing God's work, you can be hurt and killed. God is immortal. You can't possibly believe you're 'the god.' The one people worship."

He pondered her response. "You say 'the god?' God as the Christians have him is just an idea. By that standard, he is immortal, because he can't die as long as the idea is there. Kira is more than an idea. He's a man. He's me. I am the embodiment of justice. And, unlike an idea that doesn't physically exist, I am a man, as you say. I can be touched. I can actually kill, unlike the idea, which can only inspire others to kill for it. So in that aspect, I am the only God. Because the God that is worshiped isn't tangible." He leaned his head back, then brought it forward again.

She leaned forward. "Look. I know what you're trying to do. Don't try to fake me out. If you want to lessen your sentence, tell me who the current Kira is. I have it on good authority that you know."

He leaned forward as well. "Fuck you."

She raised her eyebrows; she could make a fortune off of this guy and his degree of abnormal mental patterns. _He's not insane, because he's able to perfectly coordinate his attacks. However, he's completely sociopathic and has a superiority complex._ She shook her head. Only an inexperienced psychologist would judge him insane. She saw through his attempt to make himself out to be nuts to be transferred to an institution with a lesser sentence and lower security. She clicked off the tape recorder. "We're done, here, Mister Yagami."

He rested his hands behind his head. "So, what's the prognosis? What do you think of me?"

She stood up, but stopped at his chair. "Personally, Mister Yagami? I think you're an evil son of a bitch that deserves to be where you're at. But, professionally? I know how smart you are. You're not insane, no matter what you say. I saw through your act. You're not getting a lesser sentence. When they see these results, your reevaluation papers will get destroyed." She walked away, exiting behind the door. The guards came in.

Light picked up the chair with his chained hands and threw it uselessly into the bulletproof glass. "Fuck!" He had to get out of this prison and back to his Death Note. That Mikami might have the right ideas, but he was far too likely to get arrested for it, and someone had to continue the mantle of God properly.

L sat down on his chair. "Miss Mizuhara? What did you think of Kira?"

Koyomi adjusted her glasses. "He tried to fake me out, try to make himself out to be nuts so I'd tell the committee that he was insane and needed institutionalizing. I was smarter than that. I also believe he knows who the current Kira might be, but he refused to talk about that subject. I believe he wishes that someone always be in the position of Kira, so the time it would take for him to get back to the Death Note if Mikami got incarcerated, would be unacceptable from his perspective." She scratched her neck.

L nodded. "Ah, I see. Thank you for your help. I'm glad I was able to find you; you're pretty good at getting information out of people."

Osaka crept into the room. "Who're you talking to?"

L leaned away from the phone. "I hired a psychologist to analyze Kira; someone I personally taught some ideas to about interrogation. Her name is Koyomi Mizuhara."

Osaka beamed. "I went to school with her!"

Koyomi smiled. "I was glad to be of assistance. Call if you need help." She hung up.

L stood up, gently taking off Osaka's coat and hanging it up. "We've got to get some more people on, but regardless, it looks as though we've got one more assignment to do together. You up for it?"

She beamed. "Of course, Ryuzaki!"

He leaned in and kissed her. She pushed away, and looked at him as though he'd punched her. Before he could apologize, however, she kissed him back. Then he slowly embraced her. She wrapped her arms around him as he began to unfasten her dress and caress her soft skin. They moved backwards into the bedroom and onto the bed.

Koyomi ascended a set of stairs and approached a single room. She knocked on a door.

Teru Mikami didn't look up from his notebook. "Who is it?"

"Delivery," she said.

He got up. He hated to interrupt God's work, but he couldn't have people snooping around. He looked through the eyepiece. Koyomiko Mizuhara, his eyes told him. He opened the door.

"I have something for you," she said, reaching in her coat pocket.

"What is it?"

"This!" she sprayed him in the face with a small canister of a gas that made him pass out. She entered his room. "Now, where is it?" She shut the door, moving his unconscious body. "Oops, forgot something." She pulled out a silenced nine millimeter. "Goodbye, Teru Mikami." She fired a single shot right into the middle of his forehead. Brandishing the gun back into her coat pocket, she searched the room with gloves on, finding the Death Note in a drawer. She picked up her cell phone and called a number.

"Sir? I've acquired the Note. Yes, it's intact and the subject, Teru Mikami, is dead. No, there's no more threat from him or Light Yagami. What's that? Fine. I'll write it down now." She set the phone down and wrote, "Light Yagami" into the Death Note. "There. Problem solved. Where do you want me to deliver it to you at? Okay, I'll be there. Be there soon, Mister Keehl." She hung up.

"Please, call me Mello," he said, hanging up.

He pulled out his binoculars. "You just continue having sex and enjoying being the greatest detective in the world, L Lawliet. I will prove myself better than you ever were, by exposing both Mikami as the second Kira, and I will even make YOU into a Kira!" He peered in on L and Osaka. "You just keep at it, L. You might not have the chance to do her again."

About twenty minutes later, he descended to the floor level and got in a limousine. Koyomi entered. She handed him the notebook. "All the pieces are in place, Mello." They both grinned.


	5. Chapter 5

Probable Improbability  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER FIVE

L got out of the shower and toweled off. He put the toilet lid down and sat. He rubbed his eyes as he stared at the floor. _Wow_, he thought. _I can't believe I've actually done it_. I've fallen in love with a girl, for the first time ever. He shook his head. Never once had he believed in the old fashioned images of romance, for those usually turned out to be false. A storm of emotions raged through his head all at once. _I've just had sexual intercourse with Ayumu. I've always believed I'd be a virgin until I was married. Never did I think I'd see this day. _ He realized something. _Wait, I'm thinking of her by her first name? She's not Osaka in the sexual aspect?_ He scratched his wet hair. In his mind, he considered her twice: "Osaka" was the her that he'd met on the bench and given a ride home, that talked in a thick dialect and sounded like a simpleton. She was the girl he'd gotten to help him on a dangerous case and put her life on the line for others. However, when he thought of the sexual side of her, he couldn't possibly imagine "Osaka" being sexual. It just didn't fit. This side he saw as "Ayumu," the mature woman that the child-like naiveté sat down inside. Plus, he thought of her and it made him feel...better than he was alone. _Is this love or am I attracted to her curves? God, I'm so good at figuring out the crimes of the world! Why can't I figure out how I feel about this girl?!_ He slapped himself in the head.

Still, he knew of his duty. He would ponder more of his feelings later. The clock ticked away, and he had to get the truth around. A clean pair of jeans and a shirt sat on his sink and he donned them. His faithful assistant made breakfast in the kitchen. "Watari, I need to talk to you. Koyomi is working for someone, and she's an enemy of ours."

Watari stood back from the sweet concoction he made for them. "Ryuzaki, are you sure? You just hired her."

L grimly regarded him. "I really was hoping she'd be fine, she was the best psychologist I interviewed, but she was talking to me and she blabbed a name. Mikami. It was a case of she didn't even realize she'd blabbed. Now we have a new direction to take this in, and it probably isn't over."

Watari would have rolled his eyes if he didn't have more respect. "I'll get in touch with those back home." If L's words rang true, he'd have to make sure Near and Mello didn't get involved.

"No," L commanded. "We can't trust Near or Mello. Not now."

"Ryuzaki, what are the chances, I mean seriously, that they are involved?"

L thought a moment. "Less than one percent, but then again, those were the same odds of Light Yagami. Get in touch with the prison, ascertain Yagami's condition, and I'll find out about anything in the news involving a 'Mikami,' at all."

"What's going on?" Osaka inquired, stepping into the kitchen in her evening wear. "You guys look kinda serious."

"Osaka," L gently said, approaching, "Koyomi, your friend, is working for someone who might have already obtained a Death Note. This case isn't over."

"Ryuzaki," Watari interjected, "I just got word from the prison. Light Yagami is dead. Cause of death is a heart attack."

L would have punched a wall if he stood near one. "I can't believe this. We solve the case and then it opens up again, and everything starts to unravel."

Osaka rubbed his neck. "Come on, Ryuzaki, we can't just give up. Calm down a bit and let's start over from the beginning. Ya have to realize, you convinced me to sign on in order to make a difference." She took a rather bold step and kissed his cheek.

L looked at her, and how beautiful she looked when she smiled. A smile matching hers formed, and he thought less of how the case had taken a wrong turn. He felt very comfortable knowing she stood at his side throughout the case. Even if it wasn't true love, it certainly meant more to him than any other contact he'd had. "You're right, Osaka," he gently replied, his voice devoid of the strained nervousness it had previously. "We must go on."

Osaka sat down at the kitchen table, quietly thinking to herself as she partook of Watari's delicious treat. _Koyomi is an enemy? I never would've imagined that_. She scratched her forehead. _She was always a bit different in high school, but a killer? Hmm. I don't get it_. She took another bite. "Ryuzaki," she inquired, "do we have any leads?"

Watari preceded his young master. "We do now. Word just came in, late yesterday, A 'Teru Mikami' was found dead in his apartment. No fingerprints. His desk was searched. Ryuzaki, what would you say the probability is that he's our 'Mikami'?" He knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from L himself.

"Oh, I highly doubt it could possibly be anyone else, so I'd say, a hundred percent." He took a large bite of the sweet dessert. "Did anyone see the person visit him?" He was hoping someone had heard something he could utilize. Knowing the nature of the crime, it meant someone who knew about the note had gotten involved. That meant he probably wasn't going to have the luxury of finding someone who'd seen the visit. "I hope someone saw the killer. I mean, it's about 99% likely that it was Koyomi herself, but still..."

Watari shook his head. "Sorry. There's no clues or evidence at all."

"Well in any case, let's inspect the crime scene. I'll arrange it with the police."

"Ryuzaki," Watari interjected, "we've got a visitor. It's Shoichiro Yagami."

"Let him in," L requested. He mentally steeled himself for the barrage he knew he'd receive. The police officer stormed into the room. "I would say it's nice to see you, Mr. Yagami, but let's skip the formalities."

"My son is dead! Dead, Ryuzaki!" He collared the detective. "HOW COULD YOU LET MY SON DIE?"

"Mr. Yagami, please, I had Light sent to a prison where he wasn't going to have the problem of being killed by a fellow prisoner. He was killed by someone who got ahold of the Death Note." He analyzed the left hand grasping his collar in anger. If he had to, he could utilize his martial arts skills to free himself from the hold, but he would rather let the police officer vent.

"Ryuzaki, I can't believe this. How did the Death Note leave custody? HOW?"

"The shinigami must have taken it back. It isn't hard to imagine, is it?"

Shoichiro released the detective, and cupped his hands on his face, to hide his crying. "My family has been stressed enough, now my son is dead, and we're not likely to stop the media from having a field day with this information."

L leaned back. "Mr. Yagami, if we're going to bring this new suspect to justice, I'm gonna have to keep working with the police department. We need to inspect the crime scene of this Mikami victim."

"Tell me something, did this Mikami kill my son?"

L shook his head. "While it is a possibility, I doubt it. Light Yagami was no threat to anyone anymore. And, if he had the Death Note, it's because the shinigami gave it to him. I believe he was a Kira follower, otherwise he wouldn't have been continuing the work. No, the person or persons who stole the Note from him were the ones to kill your son."

"Fine," Shoichiro conceded. "You can inspect the crime scene."

Mello scratched his neck as he took a bite of a chocolate bar. "Okay, so we've got our hands on the Death Note, and we're going to initiate part two of our plan," he explained. "Here's what we're going to do. First of all, one of you is going to call that news station we've got some of our guys in, and they're going to announce that 'M' has uncovered that Mikami was the second Kira, responsible for the group of killings that took place after Yagami's incarceration."

One of the men interjected. "Sir, won't that alert L that you were the one who killed Mikami?"

Mello pointed his candy at the man. "Don't worry about L. What we do next will take care of that. Koyomi," he looked at the psychologist.

She folded her arms. "Yes, Mr. Keehl?"

He squinted. He hated knowing that someone knew his true name. Well, at least he still had the note on his person. "You've prepared the written scrap of the Note, complete with the victim's name in L's handwriting?" She handed him a small scrap of the note. He grinned. "Perfect. Here's the strategy. One of our guys is in the police force, at the crime scene. He, an expert pickpocket, will slip the scrap of the note undetected into L's back pocket when he brushes past him. Then, L will leave, and he will get an anonymous tip. He'll arrive at the scene of the Kira, and police will show up and see the dead victim and the scrap of paper in his pocket, as well as the evidence we'll have planted."

One of the guys sneered. "From world's greatest detective to Kira himself. Brilliant plan, Mello."

Mello folded his hands behind his head. "I only wish I could see the look Near's face." He laughed.

Koyomi leaned forward. "And when the police incarcerate him for the trial to go down, the media will make his true name and face public, and he'll never be able to hide behind the disguise of L ever again."

"A truly perfect victory for Mello," Mello uttered.

L got into the vehicle, along with Osaka. The both of them had gone through enough of the case to realize that they were in for the long run. It amazed the young woman, who just a few weeks before, had not even heard of L before. Now she believed she loved him. She had never experienced such a feeling before. Yet, the quirky detective made her feel better than she had for a long time. She looked at the city as the vehicle drove on towards the scene of the crime. His amazing deductive skills would surely crack the case, she knew. She had to believe in him. Still, she had found the courage to believe in herself. After all, it struck her that he probably wouldn't have noticed the other two safety precautions Light had implemented in regards to his room door. If he had found out about the cameras or bugs, the first half of the case might still be going on.

"So, we've got to make sure we find as much out as possible. We can't afford to let the trail turn cold," L said. He looked at a sheet of paper. "But, I can't just shake the feeling that we're walking into a trap." He shook it off; surely it amounted to little more than him being paranoid. The person that got involved with the Death Note probably wanted simply to continue the work of Kira. However, he wasn't planning on allowing himself to get complacent. If there existed any possibility, he had to believe it would happen. Light's incarceration proved that much.

As the vehicle stopped at the location, the two stepped out of the back. Watari put his hat on as he opened the door for them. He'd seen L enter a crime scene more times than he could possibly hope to count. Each time, he could see the transformation from human being to human calculator, taking in all the possibilities, scanning every one of the items in his view and carefully contemplating what might be from what is. He always found it amazing. This time, he looked at the girl, and saw a similar reaction. She had something of a wandering eye—then again, she DID have attention deficit disorder—but she saw patterns the same way his master did. That, he believed, proved her worth. He smiled. _You made a choice, L, and you've made a good one_, he thought.

The crowd of police officers stopped the two for only a few moments to ensure they were who they were. The body of Teru Mikami lay in the same position it had been in since the shot. The police had been smart enough to at least perform that much. Other than that, they had done exactly nothing of what he wanted. They'd dusted for fingerprints in places that couldn't remain as they were after the touch, they'd photographed things that might be damaged by bright light, and they had removed evidence they didn't think he'd find necessary. He rolled his eyes. "How can you disturb the scene so much?" he inquired.

"We're sorry, Ryuzaki, we didn't get show up to give these guys the order until after they'd already touched the scene," Matsuda told. His statement warranted a number of nervous looks from the newer officers on duty.

"At least you left the body untouched," he lamented.

As the two of them looked over the scene, one of the officers bumped into L. "Oh, so sorry, Ryuzaki! I'm just not coordinated enough today!" He had slipped the Death Note scrap into the back pocket of L, and much to his delight, the detective did not seem to notice at all.

L ignored the delay. "Osaka, come here for a second. Look at this."

She moved around the carefully drawn lines, and looked at the desk. "It's a pencil with a bunch of scrapes on it." She looked at it carefully, noting the shape of the groove-like scrapes and the location of the pencil holder. "It looks like the scrapes are caused by this pencil holder having a sharp point sticking out from the broken side."

L glanced at her. "Officers, under what circumstances did you find the pencil?"

One of the rookie officers thought a moment. "This thing? Oh, it was rotating in the vertical pencil sharpener when we came in. Apparently, the killer forgot to stop it. It had gotten pretty short before we pulled it out." He looked at L weird for such a basic question.

Osaka gasped. "Wait a minute, I think I know what you're implyin', mister Ryuzaki! If it was spinning the whole time, and the sharp broken edge of the pencil holder was grinding into the surface..."

L completed her thought. "Then, following the principle of recording on a vinyl record by a needle grinding the sound into grooves, we can play back audio recorded on this pencil!"

Matsuda offered his skepticism. "But, Ryuzaki, a vinyl LP is made to be played back by a needle, and is a special surface. This is a pencil that a broken edge of a cup-shaped pencil case ground grooves into it. This sounds a bit fishy."

"Legendary inventor Thomas Edison's first recording device was a rotating sheet of foil with grooves dug into it. It reproduced audio. The best quality from the grinding principle would come from recording onto glass, but even a pencil can be recorded onto," L reminded the young officer. "May I take the sharpener and the pencil with me? I promise the police force I will comply with any and all evidence matters once I have gotten my findings."

"Certainly," Shoichiro Yagami replied, acting as the leader on duty.

L's cellphone rang, and he answered it. "Watari? What's going on?"

Watari spoke to the point. "Ryuzaki, we've received an anonymous tip that someone has insider knowledge of who actually received the Death Note after it left Mikami's possession."

L's eyes widened. "That's great news. I'll visit them in person. Take Osaka back to the hotel room, and help her get started on decoding the evidence. Ok?"

Watari agreed, and hung up. As L started heading out, Matsuda immediately began following him. "I'm going with you. This 'anonymous tipper' might be a Kira sympathizer wanting to kill you."

L could not imagine how such a person would get Watari's private cell number, but didn't complain. "Ok, then. Just try not to interfere too much." The two began walking.

Matsuda led them away from the crime scene, and down the street several blocks until they reached large apartment building. The entrance opened easily and the two traveled up the stairs and onto the walkway of the second floor. Out of almost fourteen doors, L picked the correct one despite the dilapidated numbering on the doors being almost unreadable. He went to knock on the door, and it opened strangely. The young officer, despite his relative inexperience, knew to pull out his gun and cock it. Defense mode kicked in for both, as opening the door revealed a small metal bowl on the table with smoke coming out of it, where items had been burned. Also, a body lie on the floor, along with a cordless phone base and receiver not far from it. "Looks like your 'anonymous tipper' met his end before we could get her...wait. What's that?" L saw him point to his back pocket.

L pulled from his pocket a small piece of paper. He looked at it. _My god, this is a trap._ He thought back to the crime scene, and the person bumping into him. That provided the best opportunity for someone to slip this into his pocket. It had all the details of the victim's death, instructions to burn evidence of a suicide, and make it appear as though a perpetrator had entered the room and shot him. He quickly saw the murder weapon on the ground. A small revolver. Matsuda took the scrap from L's hands, read it, and drew his gun on the detective.

"You're under arrest! I always smelled something fishy about you!" he kept his weapon steady.

L cocked his head to the right. "Matsuda, I understand you are an emotional person, but would you please THINK for a moment? Use the principle of Occam's Razor."

Matsuda squinted in confusion. "The what razor?"

L rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about it. Basically, it is a principle that says the simplest explanation tends to be correct. Which is more likely, that I've been Kira all along—and that someone as intelligent as I am is dumb enough to let myself get into a situation in which an individual such as yourself would catch me—or, that I am being set up in a rather crude fashion by the person who now has the Death Note." They both heard frenzied footsteps running. The police, L gathered. This obviously, was the other part of the trap. The officers would arrive and gather that L had conducted the murder. "Think quickly, Matsuda. If you arrest me and I'm right, you'll have doomed us all."

Matsuda began to shake. "I...I...well..."

L began to sweat. "Matsuda!"

Matsuda couldn't shake his suspicion. Still, he had seen enough of L to at least want to know better. "Oh, you're probably right," he quickly ascertained, then took the scrap in his hand and ate it. He forcibly chewed and swallowed the only piece of evidence that would incriminate L.

The officers burst into the room. "What the...what's going on?"

"We found this one dead," Matsuda explained. "We'd gotten in to hear his tip and found him lying dead."

L leaned against the wall, relieved. This trap, while executed rather well, was based on one all-important aspect, which crippled the plan once it failed. Such a trap stinks of someone in Whammy house. Although, I can hardly imagine it being Near, and Mello, well, I just can't figure him being against me. He received a phone call from Watari. "Ryuzaki, we've scanned the grooves into the computer off the pencil, and calculated the revolutions per minute of the sharpener."

"Good," L complimented. "Play the sound through the phone."

Severe hissing and crackling dominated the sound. Below it, whirring sounds from the sharpener and grinding from the jagged edge of the cup. "Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate," Mikami's distorted voice could be clearly heard saying. Thwap; the sound of barely audible knocking on his door, as distorted by the low quality of the recording media. "Who is it?" Mikami's voice again.

A faint, distorted female voice could be heard saying, "Delivery." L knew immediately, it was Koyomi. Creaking sounds of him moving his chair to stand up audible, then footsteps over to the door. A door opening. "I have something for you," the same voice said.

"What is it," he could be heard replying.

"This!" her voice yelled back. Then, a faint thud of a body hitting the floor. It had to be Mikami. He hadn't heard a gunshot so he wasn't dead yet. "Now where is it?" She must have been thinking out loud. A loud, heavily saturated bang could be heard, this had to be the gunshot. Brief sounds of objects being moved, L figured this was Koyomi searching for the Note. Then, beeping sounds; obviously, this was a cell phone. "Sir? I've acquired the Note. Yes, it's intact and the subject, Teru Mikami, is dead. No, there's no more threat from him or Light Yagami. What's that? Fine. I'll write it down now." Next, audible was the sounds of scribbling. The writing of Light's name occurred here. "There. Problem solved. Where do you want me to deliver it to you at? Okay, I'll be there. Be there soon, Mister Keehl."

L's phone dropped to the floor. Watari expressed his concern audibly, although L was too shocked to pick it up right away. _Dear lord, Mello? Mello is behind this?_ He wiped his face of sweat while his mouth hung open in shock.


	6. Chapter 6

Probable Improbability  
by Moonraker One

A/N: This chapter is short because I'm preparing for the next one.

CHAPTER SIX

Osaka brushed some of L's hair out of his eyes as he was too dumbfounded from what had happened to pay much attention. He had an expression of betrayal and mistrust, as a person he believed to have been one of his beloved heirs had utterly turned on him. It struck him the same way a fist would. Mihael Keehl—Mello—he knew to be jealous, but he always believed the envy pointed to Near instead. With the gentle brush of the Osakan's hand, he hastily snapped out of the funk and started thinking analytically. _With Mello's actions, I know conclusively he's seeking to put me out of commission_, he calculated. _And, based on the trap, he's trying to get me falsely convicted of a crime. It would suit his emotional being if he framed me and took credit for Yagami's incarceration._ He slapped his head. This couldn't be happening, yet it was.

"Ryuzaki?" she calmly asked, "who is Mello?" She'd never heard of some of these people he would occasionally talk about, yet she was interested. By his expression, she guessed it had been a friend of his he had trusted almost implicitly. The closest thing she could imagine was Koyomi behaving immorally.

L forced himself into a response. He didn't want to seem downtrodden. "I grew up in an orphanage called Whammy House, where intelligent kids such as myself are groomed into greatness. Mello—Mihael Keehl—was the second in line after another friend, Near, to take the title of L," he explained. He scratched an itch on his head. "I saw the envy he held towards Near, but I never imagined he'd focus on me." Watari tried to cheer him up by handing him a cup of ice cream. He accepted it—and ate it—but still was emotionally affected. The elderly assistant had seldom seen his young master so. The detective truly cared for the others that had grown up in Whammy house—and it hurt him to know Mello had sworn to take him down.

Osaka had the dubious honor of breaking the silence by discussing practical matters. "So, what are we going to do now?" She knew she had to get L's wheels turning by focusing on the matters in front of them, but knew it would continue to haunt him nonetheless.

L slapped himself to get himself in the right state of mind. "We have the evidence required to put Koyomi behind bars," he uttered, throwing himself into the proper mood forcefully. "We have to separate her from Mello. Once we do, we need to figure out how to extract the information we need from her. But most importantly, the Death Note needs to leave Mello's possession." The first task of the three seemed easy enough. What bugged him would be the next two. To get the Death Note out of the hands of Mihael Keehl would be harder than removing the chocolate from his possession. He knew the guy too well. Nothing would stop him from getting what he wanted; he had a knack of using anything in his path to get his desires. It was how he weaseled his way into a high position in the mafia.

"We need to figure out where Koyomi is going to be next," he said. "She should be easy enough to incarcerate." He frowned. "I think I know exactly how to get the information out of her." He pulled Osaka closer to him. "Tell me something, do you think you could get in touch with her without seeming connected to me?" He had his very specific plan but he had variables he usually didn't have. Other people were very predictable. He could wrap his mind around them and figure out virtually any action they might take in any given situation. Osaka, however, the girl boggled his mind. It wasn't just her spaciness. She had some quality about her that evaded even his intellect.

She thought for a few moments, looking upward, as if for inspiration. "I think I could, if I put enough effort into it," she admitted. "Although, I do admit you've kinda got a bit of explaining more about this Mihael Keehl guy, if I'm gonna try and figure out what she's workin' with him for." She felt concerned. Koyomi had always struck her as a very upstanding woman with values and she would not sell out for anyone. All the times she would argue with Tomo about issues taught her that. "So, do you got a plan yet, mister Ryuzaki?"

He rubbed his eyes. "I do, but you're going to have to make sure you do this right, or else we'll be too far back."

She beamed at the prospect of being actually sneaky. She'd seen lots of spy movies, but never had a chance to actually do it. "I think I can do this, mister Ryuzaki."

L rubbed her hair. "I knew you could." She smiled at his gesture, which warranted a smile in return. "I'm going to teach you exactly what to say, and you'll have to say it perfectly. Understand?" She nodded. "Good. This will be our chance." He scooped some candy from a bowl and chomped down on it.

Several miles away, in a secured location, two individuals sat across from each other at a dinner table. A young blonde sipped from a glass of wine while a glasses-wearing woman ate a rather exquisite Italian pasta dish. Mello had taken the news that his first plan to incarcerate his former mentor had gone awry rather well, seeing as he predicted the turn of events. The world's greatest detective did not garner such a title mildly. He hoped, at least, that his actions would set the master thinker on alert. His goal had lofty implications; the Kira murders were too high profile a crime spree to allow someone else to take credit for. The doctor across from him would aid him in that regard. She often lied to her patients and told them she was only a junior psychologist, but in fact, she was a licensed doctor. Only those who paid for her "extra" services would know that, however.

"Mr. Keehl," she spoke up, interrupting her steady sequence of bites. "I have to admit, I don't think I quite understand how you're going to go through with your second plan. L is smart enough to know just about every single technique you could possibly come up with."

He donned a familiar grin; to her, this meant he had rather diabolical topics in mind. "Ah, but you see, there is one fatal flaw in the otherwise unbeatable L. Despite his unmatchable detective skills, and his thinking patterns which are second to none, there are lows to which he refuses to believe certain people will stoop." He lifted a small silver case onto the desk. "This is one of those lows." He opened the case. Inside, was a small computer console—roughly the size of a compact disc case—as well as several needles and three vials of silvery liquid. "It's a brand new military technology the Americans have developed. We stole it, of course."

Koyomi looked at it with surprised regard. "What is it?" She examined one of the vials of silvery liquid. "And what do these do?" He snatched it from her hand.

"I'll show you in a moment." He placed the vial into a circular slot in the small computer console. Completely shielded from her view, he tapped the screen several times, which caused the silvery contents of the vial to drain into the console, and a few seconds later, return to the vial. He grinned at her again as he took the vial and placed it into the needle. About one millimeter of the silvery liquid, he injected into his neck. His head twitched a brief instant, and he closed his eyes. Everyone looked intrigued as he opened his eyes and tapped the console screen a few more times in secret. Finishing, he took the needle and vial once again. "Koyomi, take a shot. I promise it won't hurt you in any way."

She was skeptical, but the fact that he was trusting that she wouldn't go straight to military officials about stolen technology, she trusted him. That, and the fact that he'd paid her a large sum of money. She took the needle in her hand, and gently injected a very small amount of the liquid into her neck. It tingled as it traveled through her blood and up to her brain. She looked at him oddly for a moment. "Okay, Mr. Keehl, time to explain. What was that?"

He laughed momentarily. "You don't trust me after that? Fine. I'll explain. This is an intricate nanite system which allows one person to gain another's knowledge, and to remotely have access to what they're seeing at any given moment." He tapped the screen of the console a few times.

"Goddammit, Mello! What's with the distrust?"

He gave a confused look on purpose. "Distrust? You misunderstand. I simply need to know what you're seeing without having to resort to remote cameras that might be scanned and jammed." He tilted his head. "And honestly, you KNOW I'm affiliated with the _mafia_. What did you think you were getting into?"

She stood up angrily, lifting her pack. "Well, you can count me out. There won't be any invasions of my mind!"

He raised his eyebrows. "It's a shame you feel that way. But do you think you could give me just two hours?"

She turned to him. "Two hours for what?"

"Two hours for me to get closer to my target." After tapping the screen a few more times, he slumped over, asleep on the table. Immediately, Koyomi began to feel woozy, culminating in her falling backwards. One of the henchmen grabbed her and held her up. She came to in a few moments.

"Well, that was weird," Koyomi said, examining her body. She looked back at the slumped-over Mello at the table, and took his case, closing it and placing it into her briefcase. "It would seem it worked."

"Are you ok, Miss Koyomi?" One of the men asked.

"It's me, Mello, you idiot! I needed to borrow this woman's body for two hours!" She flicked him in the face. "I figured the only way I could get close enough to L to spring my ultimate trap was to actually be someone else. So I figured this nanite-based technology would be the perfect disguise, enabling me to temporarily download my consciousness into another body." She looked back at his body again. "Put my main body in my room, and keep it guarded at all costs. It is completely undefended until I get back into it."

The other henchman stopped him. "What's your plan, boss?"

He grinned with Koyomi's face. "Simple. If I'm Koyomi, I can offer L inside information in exchange for this body not being incarcerated. He'll think an insider in my organization is turning coat, and he'll jump at the chance. Meanwhile, I get access to the world's greatest detective."

The man laughed. "That's brilliant, boss!"

Mello headed out. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a young, twenty-something female Japanese psychiatrist disguise to use to my advantage." He assumed L would send out Osaka since the girl had connections to the body he was currently inhabiting, so he used Koyomi's knowledge of the past to know how to act in the presence of the simple-minded girl. The girl would be simple enough to deal with. It was once he got in touch with his former mentor that he had to concern himself.


End file.
